The fundraising company Omaze’s new donation model will guarantee £1m minimum to every charity partner from its house draws, it has announced.
Omaze said today that the RSPCA would be the first charity to benefit from the new arrangement as part of a prize draw for a six-bedroom house in Somerset, worth £3m.
Omaze is a for-profit company that runs high-value prize draws and shares a proportion of its earnings with selected charity partners.
The company said that under its new donation agreement, its charity partners would receive a guaranteed 17 per cent of ticket sales from each draw, irrespective of costs.
Under the previous model, partners would receive a share of the surplus proceeds of each draw, after VAT, prizes and marketing costs.
It also used to guarantee a minimum donation of £100,000.
The RSPCA told Third Sector that it hoped the draw would raise more than the guaranteed amount, with Omaze forecasting it would generate its highest amount for a charity partner.
Last year, the charity benefitted from £1m raised through its partnership with Omaze, despite the minimum guaranteed amount being just £100,000.
Chris Sherwood, chief executive of the RSPCA, said the increased minimum guarantee was important for the charity’s project planning.
Sherwood said: “It provides us with greater certainty to be able to plan and allocate crucial funds to projects and services sooner, and comes at a time when calls about animal neglect and abandonment are at a three-year high, underlining the importance of this funding to support our rescue teams.”
James Oakes, chief international officer at Omaze, added: “We’re delighted to be partnering with the RSPCA again. It will be the first to benefit from the change in our model – which will see even more money going to good causes and charities being introduced to brand new audiences that they otherwise wouldn’t reach.”
Omaze said it had raised more than £22m for some of the UK’s major charities, including: Teenage Cancer Trust, British Heart Foundation, The Prince’s Trust, the NSPCC, Marie Curie, the RNLI, Macmillan Cancer Support and Breast Cancer Now.